


A Little Piece of Your Soul

by SolariaLunar21



Series: a piece of your soul for a piece of mine [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon character deaths, Happy Ending, I've written one unhappy ending in my life...never again, M/M, Mentions of Past Derek/Paige - Freeform, Mentions of Stiles Stilinski/Lydia Martin, Post-Canon, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, mentions of Derek Hale/Braeden - Freeform, mentions of the rest of the pack - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolariaLunar21/pseuds/SolariaLunar21
Summary: Derek puts the cuff around his wrist three weeks after the fire, he’s sixteen and in mourning for his family, for Paige, and for the woman he thought Kate was. Laura never asks him why and he never offers an answer. On his eighteenth birthday he feels the burn of his soul mark being branded onto his skin under the cuff. He never looks at it.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: a piece of your soul for a piece of mine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761649
Comments: 31
Kudos: 722





	A Little Piece of Your Soul

**Author's Note:**

> Spent the past month and a half of quarantine re-watching Teen Wolf. The other night I got the idea to write this. 48 hours later here we are. This sticks to the canon pretty darn closely, the only difference is I changed the year Lydia was born for plot purposes. Everything else stays for the most part the same. I hope you enjoy this. All mistakes are mine by the way, if you notice any glaring ones grammar wise please kindly let me know :)

Derek puts the cuff around his wrist three weeks after the fire, he’s sixteen and in mourning for his family, for Paige, and for the woman he thought Kate was. Laura never asks him why and he never offers an answer. On his eighteenth birthday he feels the burn of his soul mark being branded onto his skin under the cuff. He never looks at it.

Laura’s says the name _Allison_ in swirling yellow script, Derek remembers his mothers’ that read _Andrew_ in a bright blue, his father’s said _Talia_ in the same color. Peter’s was still a red _Jeremy_ the last time Derek remembers seeing him. He wonders if Peter’s Jeremy has a mark that is grey or not yet. Derek refuses to ever look at his own, too afraid that it’ll say Paige in grey script that matches her handwriting. Even more afraid that it’ll say a mocking Kate in whatever color of the rainbow the fates see fit. He’s better off not knowing, at least that’s what he tells himself.

Laura meets an Allison with _Laura_ written on her wrist in bright pink in the fall of 2009, the marks don’t match in color, but they could care less. Derek wants to say something, but he knows that successful non-matches work, his grandparents on his father’s side hadn’t matched, and they were together for 70 years before they’d died. They break up a year later when Allison meets the Laura that matches her bright pink. Laura returns to Beacon Hills after an e-mail from their mother’s old Emissary Alan Deaton two months later, she’s dead two weeks after that.

Derek returns to Beacon Hills cuff tight on his wrist wondering what to do now. Knows that since he’s not the Alpha that someone killed his sister for her power. He meets a new werewolf, one who obviously has no clue yet what’s happening to him in the woods. His human friend stares at Derek with wide amber eyes like he’s shocked to see Derek again. Derek doesn’t remember ever seeing eyes like that before, deep down figures he would because they’re….

He finds the top half of Laura’s body and gives it a proper burial; _Allison_ is still written in looping yellow along her wrist. Scott and Stiles dig up her body and have Derek arrested for murder. He gets out when his alibi pulls through to prove he only got into town after the bottom half of her body was found.

Scott is resistant to everything Derek tries to teach him and Stiles is annoying. The only thing he has in common with the human is the matching cuff the boy wears on his wrist. He wonders why he wears it because Stiles is only sixteen. Then again Derek was only sixteen when he started wearing his, figures it’s none of his business, soul-marks are personal. If someone has a cuff on it’s for a reason.

Derek wonders if Allison Argent that Scott is enamored with will turn 18 and have a grey Laura scrawled across her wrist. Derek hopes for Laura’s memory that it doesn’t. (10 months later he stands over Allison’s grave as her body is lowered into the ground, she’s only 17 and her wrist is unblemished. Derek wonders if fate knew they’d never meet.)

Peter’s wrist when he visits him again no longer says Jeremy in red but in grey and Derek mourns for his Uncle. Wonders what happened to his Uncle’s soulmate, wonders if Derek hadn’t been an idiotic sixteen-year-old and gotten his family killed if they would’ve found each other before it was too late.

Everything blurs together except for Kate who mocks him with the dark burgundy colored _Dean_ written on her wrist that she’d covered with a cuff to lure Derek in six years before. The only fear it erases is that the name on Derek’s wrist doesn’t say Kate. He still doesn’t look at it.

He kills Peter and becomes the Alpha. Makes a pack of teenagers who are only trying to fit in. He starts getting them ready for war. None of them have soul-marks, none of them wear a cuff. Stiles is the only person he’s seen wear one besides himself. Erica asks him what his mark says…he never answers her (when he holds her lifeless body in his arms six months later he wishes he had been honest and told her he doesn’t know because he’s too scared to look maybe if he had she’d still be alive).

Cora bursts back into his life and he feels some semblance of family slot into place that’s been missing since Laura died. They don’t talk much, Cora was always the most introverted of the Hale siblings, Derek has her beat by a mile now. He meets Jennifer the same night he gets Cora back and he wonders if maybe his wrist bears her name. She wears a cuff just like him, she never asks about his and he never asks about hers.

He’s forced to kill Boyd, his blood seeps under Derek’s cuff staining his skin and his claws and he hates the power he feels course through his veins. Stiles’ touch to his shoulder is the only thing that brings him back. He leaves without telling Jennifer, when he hugs her again, he feels something shift in him. He almost tells her he loves her…but he doesn’t because he can’t trust that that’s what he’s feeling.

Hours later Stiles is the one that tells him she’s the Darach. Tears in his eyes when he says she took his father. Derek would never live with himself if his blindness to her evil cost Stiles the last family he has. She tries to convince him but it’s too late. The trust he has in Stiles, in Scott is more than he has for her. He’s learnt that he can’t trust love it’s fucked him over too much. But he can trust pack. He can trust Stiles who looks at him over Scott and Jennifer’s shoulders begging him with his eyes to _believe_ him. Derek does.

Stiles helps him save Cora, helps him get her out in midst of all the chaos. Derek sacrifices his alpha spark for her, and as he waits for her to wake up afterwards, he starts to feel a burning in his mark. It stays for hours until suddenly it’s gone. He never once looks.

“You don’t know who you have on your wrist do you?” Cora asks him as they leave Beacon Hills behind. It’s the first time she’s ever brought up his soul-mark. The first time anyone has ever brought it up besides Erica.

“No.”

“You think it’s Paige?”

“Maybe. I’d deserve it.”

“Derek, you don't.”

“We don’t have a family except for Peter because of me.”

“We don’t have a family except for Peter because of Kate Argent. One day you’ll believe that,” she says. They never bring up soul-marks again. He brings her back to her pack in South America, gets caught with Peter by the Calaveras and saved by Braeden. Her wrist says _Oliver_ in grey.

The Nogitsune wears Stiles’ face and it feels wrong in Derek’s soul in a way that nothing else ever has. He attacks and gets thrown into a wall, watches as what he thinks is Stiles breaks through before the arrogant smirking face replaces it in seconds. His soul-mark burns like it did just after he saved Cora. He doesn’t know what it means. He still doesn’t look. The Oni come and The Nogitsune is knocked unconscious the others take him away.

The next time he sees Stiles he’s himself again. As much as himself as he can be looking like death warmed over. He tells Derek about Allison, Lydia standing by his side. The both of them still look like they’re in shock. Derek knows Stiles blames himself, wishes he could do something to get him to believe that none of this was his fault. Stiles still wears his cuff.

Derek dreams of Stiles, and then Kate is there, and she’s kidnapped him. The next thing he remembers is fighting Berserkers at the school. Slowly he turns human, has no idea what Kate has done to him. He kisses Braeden, starts a relationship with her, because it doesn’t matter what name is on his wrist. She makes him feel alive even when his body feels like it’s failing.

Then he’s dying. Braeden sits over him as the others rush into the church. He tells Stiles to save Scott. Watches as the boy turns away and starts to run. Stiles turns one more time a look on his face like Derek’s never seen before. He looks like he wants to say something, but he turns and runs into the church away from Derek.

Derek dies. He’s only 23. He wakes up in a room filled with white. A washed-out scene of the Sheriff’s station. He wonders why of all places his soul takes him there. Then there’s a woman. She’s smiling at Derek and walks closer. Her eyes are familiar, the tilt of her smile is too.

“Hello Derek.”

“Who are you?” he asks because he swears, he’s seen her before. He just can’t figure out where.

“That doesn’t matter right now.”

“Where am I?”

“The in between place, you aren’t dead, but you aren’t alive either.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you get to choose,” she says her voice soft. There’s something about her that reminds him of someone, but he can’t quite figure it out.

“Choose?”

“If you stay and join the rest of your family, or if you go back.”

“My family?”

“Yes, they don’t blame you Derek. What happened wasn’t your fault,” she replies reaching to rest a hand on his cheek.

“Why should I go back? If I can be with them why should I go back?”

“Because my son’s soul chose yours many years ago, and if you go back you will have a beautiful story to tell when you see your family again.”

“Your son?”

“Yes, my little Mischief. His soul touched yours and changed what fate had in store for the both of you, he’s waiting for you.”

“I’d ruin him,” Derek says not knowing who this woman’s son is but knowing that deep in his own soul he ruins all the people he loves. The only reason Cora is still alive is because Derek’s made sure that she was safe then he stayed away.

“No, you could never, your heart is too big, and he’d never let it happen.”

“What happens if I stay?” he asks and watches as the woman’s eyes turn sad.

“He’ll die. Not now, but a few years from now he dies because you aren’t there to save him again.”

“Again?”

“If you go back you two will be happy, _you_ Derek will be happy. It’s all us mothers want is for our children to be happy.”

“Will they understand?” he questions.

“Oh Derek of course they will,” she leans forward and gives him a kiss on the forehead. His last thought before darkness surrounds him is that her eyes are the same as Stiles’.

He wakes up as a wolf. The dream slipping through his fingers as he joins the fray. He stands in front of Kate and announces that he’s evolved. Naked as the day he was born. He kills the Berserker. His cuff lays in the dirt somewhere behind him. He refuses to look at his wrist. The fighting stops as Kate runs away. Derek turns back to Braeden and his clothes. Before he gets dressed without looking down, he holds out his wrist and he asks Braeden,

“Is it grey?”

“No, it’s green, bright emerald green.”

“Can you put my cuff on?” She does.

Derek makes the decision to leave Beacon Hills. Says goodbye in his own way to the pack. Stiles hugs him for the first time. He pulls away wishes him safe travels and returns to Malia’s side. Derek stays with Braeden for a few more months before they make a clean break and he goes to be with Cora.

He stays and they grow closer the pack welcomes him and he starts to feel at peace. Once in a while he gets texts from Scott, even rarer are the ones from Stiles. Almost a year after his death that wasn’t Derek gets a text with just the words, _I’m sorry_ from Stiles. Only minutes later his soul-mark burns. The burn turns into a dull ache for months, Derek still never takes the cuff off unless he shifts into a full wolf.

Cora is the only one besides Braeden to see his mark. She never comments on it. One day the ache goes away. Braeden calls him for help shortly after, he heads to Brazil only to find the pack she was looking for slaughtered. He runs only stopping when he reaches North Carolina to stop at one of the Hale vaults. Chris finds him, Derek says he could’ve called, forgetting that he’d lost his phone months before.

Chris returns to Beacon Hills to help in the fight. Derek somehow finds himself a target for the FBI. Which he finds out when suddenly during a meeting that he’d found filled with hunters turns into a raid. Somehow in the rain of bullets a familiar heartbeat reaches his ears and then there’s Stiles. FBI jacket on as he crouches in front of Derek smirking.

“Didn’t think you’d get away from me did ya?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Internship found out they were hunting your ass so…here I am,” Stiles says just before a bullet ricochets and hits him in the side of the foot. Derek ends up carrying Stiles out of the fray exasperated by the younger man, but he gets them to safety. He tells Stiles about the pack in Brazil, Beacon Hills written in blood on the wall. Explains his encounter with Chris and Kate. Stiles doesn’t seem to know anything about Gerard being back in Beacon Hills. Says whatever’s been happening back home the pack has kept from him. They go back.

It’s worse than Derek could’ve expected. In the end they win the battle, but the war continues for the next two years before culminating in a final showdown. Stiles almost dies. Derek takes a bullet for him. A memory tries to fight its way through but fails to do so. They win. Monroe is arrested for her crimes, sent to jail for life. Her fanatics are taken in with her. Her numbers dwindled in the months before her arrest after she killed an innocent six-year-old human whose only crime was that her parents were werewolves.

In the years that pass during the fight with Monroe and her followers Derek somehow finds a confidant in Lydia of all people. He’s not sure how. Maybe it’s because he never asks her why her wrist is nameless. Just like she never asks why even at 26 he wears a cuff on his wrist. They never talk about her relationship with Stiles not until after it’s over. She shows up at the loft shortly after her summer break from MIT starts just four months post Monroe. She’s wearing a cuff.

“Stiles and I broke up,” she tells him later that night after they’ve eaten pizza and she’s forced him to watch _The Notebook_.

“What happened?” he asks wondering what could’ve caused the two to break up. Even though Derek and Lydia never talked about it doesn’t mean he’s not aware of how they got together. That the love they had for each other helped Stiles break free of the Wild Hunt, he’s always assumed that the name under Stiles’ cuff says _Lydia_.

“I wondered for the longest time why I never got a name. I thought maybe it was because Stiles was in the Wild Hunt when I turned 18, that my soulmate had been erased. Now I know why I didn’t,” She’s crying silently as she tells him this. Lydia’s not someone who cries often Derek knows that she’s heartbroken. He silently rests a hand on hers and squeezes. 

“You don’t have to talk about this you know.”

“If I don’t talk to you, I’ll never talk to anybody,” Lydia admits before continuing, “When the name showed up on my wrist, I finally understood why I’ve been nameless all this time. It wasn’t because Stiles had been erased. It’s because I wasn’t ready to know yet.”

“Know what?” Derek asks having a feeling that he already has the answer to the question.

“That my soulmate isn’t him. It showed up three weeks ago. We’d been fighting a lot over the fact that he’s never shown me the name on his wrist for god six, seven months. I thought for the longest time that he didn’t want me to feel bad that his says _Lydia_ while mine says nothing at all. I finally realized it’s because it doesn’t say _Lydia_. So, when my soul-mark showed up and it wasn’t his name, I knew I couldn’t stay with him no matter how much I want too.”

“People make non-soulmate matches work all the time, look at Melissa and Chris. My father’s parents didn’t match, they were together for 70 years,” Derek states even though Lydia must know statistics on soulmates and non-soulmate matches. Lydia knows facts, it’s people she still struggles with sometimes. She shakes her head at him.

“Did you know he’s worn a cuff since he was ten? His dad and Scott are the only two people that know the name. He’s never told anyone else. He imprinted on someone. Or his soul did. He literally changed his soul to match someone else’s. It wasn’t mine.”

Derek’s heard the stories. Everyone has. 85% of the population get their soul-marks on their 18th birthdays at the time of their birth. 10% of the population just like Lydia don’t get their soul-marks until later, another 3% never get a soul-mark at all.

The last 2% are the rarest. They get their soul-marks before they turn 18 because they’ve imprinted on someone. No one knows what goes into it, the most that can be explained is that those that imprint change their fate. Their souls change to match another person’s soul. Derek’s always heard that these are the most special matches of all. He understands why Lydia couldn’t stay.

Lydia stays the night and leaves in the morning, but not before showing Derek the purple _Nathan_ written in blocky letters across her wrist. Derek wants to share that he still doesn’t know the name of his soulmate all these years later. He doesn’t. Derek never sees Lydia wear the cuff again.

Derek decides to become a Deputy. Noah is happy to have him, partners him and Jordan together as they protect Beacon Hills. Whatever Scott, Allison, and Stiles did to the Nemeton when they awoke it all those years ago has stopped. No longer is it a beacon for the supernatural. Jordan mentions he’s started seeing a therapist six months after Derek joins the force. He slips Derek the card. Both of Jordan’s wrists are nameless. Noah’s says _Claudia_ in grey.

Derek starts going to therapy when he’s 28. He finally starts to heal. To understand that he is not the cause of his family’s premature demise. He heals his heart and starts to realize it’ll be okay if he falls in love. They talk a lot about his soulmate. About the fact that Derek still doesn’t know what the name is. His therapist never pushes him to look. Derek sometimes wishes that she would. He still wears the cuff.

Stiles moves back to Beacon Hills three months after he’s turned 24, he’s left the FBI. Derek’s almost 30. He’s worn the cuff on his wrist for almost fourteen years. Just as long as Stiles has. They fall into a friendship as easy as breathing. Soon Derek realizes he’s falling in love. It terrifies him.

“You okay?” Stiles asks him five months after he’s moved home three days before the anniversary of the fire. They’re sprawled across the couches in Derek’s living room Chinese containers littering the coffee table in front of them. It’s their normal Friday night routine.

“Anniversary’s in three days,” Derek says in reply not able to lie when it comes to Stiles. He’ll always be sad this time of year, but he’s thinking more of what his therapist said in their last session. He’d confessed to her his feelings for Stiles, mentioned that Stiles had imprinted when he was young, and Derek was scared to fall in love with someone who had literally changed their soul to match someone else’s. For the first time she suggested that Derek look at the name on his wrist.

“I know, you’ve just seemed…off in other ways.”

“My therapist said something the other day that I’ve been thinking about, mostly because I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to say.”

“What’s that…if you don’t mind me asking that is, you don’t need to share,” Stiles says his chemo signals going a little sour with embarrassment and anxiety. Derek places a hand on Stiles knee to calm him like he’s taken to doing lately. It’s instinctual to do with Stiles.

“I don’t mind, she uh…she said I should look at the name on my wrist,” Stiles eyes snap to his and his heartbeat races in his chest like Derek just confessed to murder and he’s trying to figure out all the ways he can help Derek cover it up. Derek looks away from him.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve never seen it, I don’t know what it is. I put the cuff on three weeks after the fire. Too afraid it would say Paige or Kate. I know it’s not either of them now, but I’ve just had it on for so long that showing a part of myself like that now feels too vulnerable. Even if it’s just me. The only two people that know the name are Braeden and Cora. I know that it’s emerald green and I think it’s a man’s name,” Derek confesses.

“You’ve never looked at it?” Stiles questions after a few moments of silence.

“No never.”

“Why do you think it’s a man’s name then?”

“When I died, I had a dream, I don’t remember much of it only bits and pieces, but I think I met my soulmates mom, she said her son when she talked about him,” Derek answers.

“So, are you going to look?” Stiles asks a vulnerability to his tone that Derek’s only ever heard when Stiles talks about his mom or his weeks as the Nogitsune.

“I’m afraid it won’t say what I want it too,” He admits and decides if he’s gone this far he may as well go the full mile he lifts his eyes back up to Stiles and says, “the man I love apparently imprinted a really long time ago and I never remember meeting him before he was sixteen.”

Stiles eyes widen at his confession and fill with tears. Derek’s not sure why. Stiles looks down at his own wrist at the cuff sitting there and undoes the snaps. He doesn’t remove it, but he looks back up at Derek and starts speaking.

“When I was 10 about four months after my mother died there was a really bad house fire. My dad took me to the station with him because it was late, we couldn’t get a babysitter, plus I’d had a panic attack earlier, he wanted me close in case I had another one. Only three people survived. The two teenagers a sister and brother were sitting on the benches outside my dad’s office. They looked devastated. I sat down next to them took the boys hand in mine and wished that I could help him. Because he was pretty and no one that pretty should look sad. I wanted him to be happy wished it with everything that I had that I could do that for him. At some point my wrist burned really badly. They never looked at me and I never said a word, eventually my dad took me home. The next morning, I looked at my wrist and there it was,” Stiles says pulling the cuff off to reveal the creamy white skin of his wrist that is only marred by a brilliant emerald green _Derek_. With his fingertips shaking Derek reaches to brush across his name not believing what he’s seeing but the memory is there in his mind.

“I remember that,” he whispers not wanting to ruin the fragile atmosphere.

“I won’t ever ask to see it if you never want to show me or look yourself. Just being in love with you, knowing you love me too that’s enough. But if you do want to ever look, I’ll be here too.”

Derek doesn’t reach for his cuff. He leans forward giving Stiles plenty of time to pull away and instead Stiles meets him in the middle to touch Derek’s lips with his own. As soon as their lips touch Derek feels warmth course through his body that makes him feel at peace. It’s just a simple press of lips neither of them taking it further but it’s the best kiss he’s ever had.

A year and three days later Stiles is there when Derek shakily holds out his wrist to him. Asks him if he’s sure when Derek asks. And Derek is because Stiles' been there for a full year. Loving Derek, filling his heart with warmth and laughter. It’s been a year of learning to grow together, weekly dinners with Noah, bi-monthly dinners with the Pack, finding a home to make their own together. Stiles never once asking Derek to take his cuff off but never putting his back on. By doing so he lets the world know that he’s Derek’s. Understanding when Derek wanted to take the physical relationship slow. Holding each other through nightmares. Stiles has been everything. Derek’s ready to give him the final piece of himself, the piece that belongs to Stiles more than any other besides his heart.

“Will you take it off for me?” he repeats. Stiles does so with care leaning forward when its off and kissing the name there with a small smile his eyes golden from tears of happiness when he looks up at Derek. And for the first time Derek looks down at the brilliant emerald green _Mieczyslaw_ and feels whole. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this little fic. Let me know with a kudos. Be on the lookout because I have the Stiles' POV companion fic ready to go :)


End file.
